Friday, 28 June 2013

Just a quick post this week. I figured it was about time we
had an update on one of my favourite pastimes; shower drinking. Sometimes I
have a shower even when I don’t need one – just so that I can take a drink in
with me*. You can read the original post on this activity here. Now, assuming
you’ve done that, let’s bring you right up to date with some pictures and a bit
of commentary.

First up you’ve got a glass of St Remy XO brandy at the
MacDonald Portal Hotel, near Tarporley, Cheshire. This was after the first
round of golf on my second stag do, and you can see there that there was a
handy little shelf in the corner that almost seemed like it was designed for
this purpose. You can also tell it got pretty steamy in there, but it
was entirely because of the hot water.

Much beer, whisky and cigars followed, and it all culminated
in me having a bit of a whitey far earlier than I would have liked. It was
probably a good thing though, because it meant I was [fairly] compus mentus
(considering) for the next day’s round. And I got a birdie, so that was quite
thrilling.

Santa Eulalia, Ibiza

Next is a shower-beer from my honeymoon in Ibiza. This
is Xavi Alonso on a can of Cruzcampo in the bathroom of our hotel in Santa
Eulalia. Nice. I’ve gone for the cubicle corner technique, there.

King of bottled beers

Back at home now, but this time with the king of bottled
beers; Double Maxim. I know I’ve done a post on shower drinking at home before,
but I was so excited at having some Double Maxim to take in with me, that I
thought it deserved a picture. If you don’t know why I was so excited, see the
wedding post from… some time ago.

The shape of the bottle meant it was unsuitable for
balancing on the corner, as I had with the Holsten Pils cans, so I just moved
the shampoo from the corner shelf, and stuck it in there. Success.

The next two pictures are from Honeymoon Part 2 in Vietnam, about which you should be able to read
on these pages in coming weeks. There’s a can of Bia 333, a glass of
Glenfarclas 10, and then a bottle of the green variety of Saigon beer.

Finally, and bringing you right up to date with a shower
drinking episode from my latest adventure, that if you were following me on
Twitter, you would have seen was known as Golfageddon.
Again, a full account of that will be posted on here at some time in the
future. The glass in question here is DYC 10 year old single malt.

golfageddon

That’s it for now, but you can rest assured shower drinking
is not a hobby I’ll be giving up any time soon, so I’ll collect a few more and
hit you with another post sometime in the future. Don’t forget, I’d be
delighted to see your shower drinking triumphs, so tell me about it in the
comments. I’ll be back next week with another post that, at the moment is
looking like being an investigation into the phenomenon that is the hot toddy. Join me then, but until then, have a great weekend. I know
I will – I might open a new bottle.

Friday, 14 June 2013

My friends and I love pub crawls, but I think of late we
have come to feel a little jaded. I’m struggling to find the enthusiasm. We
surely can’t have been doing this for so long that we’ve run out of pubs.

Well, you can tell something’s gone wrong because we’ve been
racking our brains trying to think of ways to bring the flame back. Bored
lovers can turn to self-help books like 50 Shades of Grey and buy a butt-plug
and a whip, but where is the bored pub crawler supposed to turn? Well, we have
to survive on our wits, ingenuity and beer. The beer helps quite a lot. So what
we’ve come up with is Birthday Wine Suit Chops. The premise? A pub crawl
where we all wear suits, have sideburns and drink wine. I don’t even like wine,
but that’s the lengths I was thinking about being prepared to go to in order to
be able to go out and have an extended drinking session. And it proved a more
popular idea than Birthday Butt-plug Chops.

I’ve been meaning to go out drinking in my suit for some
time, so it’s good to be able to say that finally it has happened.

Circumstances though, weren’t ideal. It was still the middle
of January, and it coincided with the week that winter finally hit the UK. That
meant one or two people pulled out. It also meant that my beautifully tailored
suit had to be squashed inside my winter coat for the trek between drinking
venues. It held up pretty well though.

Given the potential for slipperiness, I had toyed with the
idea of wearing my trainers with the suit, all Rab C Nesbitt style, because
they would be grippier than my work shoes (which I don’t like wearing anyway),
but when I put them on, they just looked shit. Somehow they’ve gotten all
scuffed up and scruffy recently, and they’ve crossed that line from smart
casual, be careful when you choose to wear them… to doesn’t matter, don’t give
a shit. There’s always an event that marks this transition, like going on
holiday and wearing them on the beach, or walking through a park and having to
kick a muddy ball back to some lads, but this time I can’t recall what the
event was. Long story short; work shoes it was, then.

Suitwise, I decided to wear the bespoke one because the
other two are for work, and I didn’t want our pub crawl to feel like work. Paul
even elected to wear a tie, but I wanted to look a bit scruffier than that – good
still, but just a little scruffier.

We headed out then, with the intention of beginning at 4pm.
I had emptied the last of my Dewar’s 12 into my hipflask, and already had a
warm up beer at the house. I had a couple of warming swigs of whisky on the
bus, and made it to our meeting point, the Port Street Beerhouse at around
4.10. I ordered my pint – an unadventurous pint of Veltins - and Paul arrived a
few minutes later.

When Dave arrived (late as usual) we considered buying a
bottle of wine to push the theme forward, but on investigation Dave found the
cheapest was £17, and he didn’t think that was good value. I thought that was
about average, but he just bought a glass for himself, and Paul and I continued
with the pints.

Before I get on to how good it was, I’ll get the
disappointing elements out of the way. First, even though Dave had formally
organised the evening, he hadn’t saved any money for it, so he was pretty
skint, and wouldn’t be staying out all night. Similarly, Paul was thinking he
wouldn’t be up for the steak that we had had planned all along. Frankly it was
bad enough that there were only three of us, but I hope this isn’t a sign of
getting old, or that people don’t want to spend more than a couple of hours
with me… that would be quite depressing. It’s more likely that they saw how
good my suit looked, and realised they couldn’t compete. I’m surprised they
stayed at all.

Nevertheless, it was good, and I did manage to get suitably
smashed. We didn’t struggle nearly as much as usual with venues, calling at
Gullivers as our second stop. I tried to amuse everyone by comparing the
corners of those studded leather armchairs to the foofoo, perineum and bottom
of a lady. No one else found it as funny as I did, but it did look like it. I
should have taken a photo really, because I don’t think there’s any way you can
know what I mean. I would have too, but I didn’t realise it was going to be an
abiding memory at the time.

From there we pursued my idea,
which was to drink in hotel bars for a change. Paul mentioned the Mercure Hotel
at the back of Piccadilly Gardens, which is supposed to be one of Manchester’s
best kept secrets. Hotel bars are more spacious, quieter and more relaxed than
your standard Saturday evening pub experience (if a little lacking in atmosphere),
so a Newcastle Brown Ale by the big window looking down on Piccadilly Gardens
was bang on. Even from that height, Piccadilly Gardens remains the ugliest and
probably dodgiest central square in any major European city (I would think).

A stop in one of those tiny pubs on Portland Street was
next, followed by the bar at the Palace Hotel, which is very opulent – and has
table service, so that was nice. It is perfectly fine of course to drink in the
various hotel bars, but this is the first time I’ve done it and not been
actually resident. There’s something about it that normally feels wrong. Not
when you’re in a suit! For some reason a suit brings a degree of confidence and
entitlement. It makes you walk more confidently, and you can actually perceive
a difference in the way people treat you. It could be the confidence you’re
projecting, but you can see that people are impressed. Who’s that?, they
ask each other.

Dave left us after the Palace, and Paul and I thought it
would be fun to go to a metal pub in our suits, so we crossed the road and went
to the Salisbury, which was perfectly fine. No one batted an eyelid, though
outside one guy did ask me for business advice. I took the request seriously,
as a man in full possession of several pints of beer (and a snappy suit) would,
but really, how was I supposed to know whether he should take on the extra
work, and what was he asking me for anyway?

Paul left at this point, and I headed back to Gulliver’s to
see Rob Riot and his band, Precious McKenzie. As ever, it was a pleasure to see
Rob flying the flag for fun but challenging rock n’ roll. Check em out
sometime. It’s not a blog about music, but they deserve a mention.

Finally it was off home for a kebab, and a bit of Match of
the Day. A pretty good day and night out, if not a great pub crawl then. I
think in its midst we came up with a few ideas for future excursions, but I
can’t remember them now; perhaps the others can. Even if not, good ideas don’t
disappear forever – if you’ve had a good idea once, it will come to you again.
That’s what I’ve always found anyway.

As for the suits; well I’d definitely go out in one again.
Just thinking about it now makes me miss the snug fit of the waistcoat and the
feeling that I look fricking awesome… You should try it.

That’s it from me for a couple of weeks, then. On Sunday I’m
flying over to Spain for a week of golf and booze, and it’s going to be
awesome. You can follow me on Twitter of course – I’ll try to tweet when
there’s wi-fi available – but there won’t be a new post until somewhere around
28 June. Try not to miss me too much.

Friday, 7 June 2013

Good evening everybody, and what a beautiful evening it is,
here in Manchester in the depths of summer. It’s the kind of evening that makes
you forget it was fricking cold less than two weeks ago, and forces you to believe
that this is what the weather is going to be like for the next three months.
Well, I’m sorry to burst your little bubble, but it’s not going to be like
that. Even so, let’s enjoy this good fortune while we can.

I’ve got something a bit different for you this week – an
actual story about something that happened way back in 1998. So, increase the
brightness on your phone, so you can actually see the screen, and get stuck in…

One morning, as I was heading out to lectures during my
second year at university, I saw what looked like a petrol canister on the
doorstep outside. There was no note, so I took it inside and opened it to have
a quick sniff and see what liquid it contained. Had I interrupted someone in
the early stages of committing arson? Had a desperate oil drum left its illicit
offspring to be raised by a house of childless students? Was it just someone’s
helpful suggestion for how we could clear up the mess in the living room?

Wait! You forgot to leave some matches! Oh, it’s ok, I’ve
got one lighter that has gas, and another that can still spark…

No. None of those. It was wine, enough wine for 2, maybe 3
people to drink, but probably not all 7 people who lived in our house – or
maybe I was vastly overestimating my capacity to drink wine. People do that
when it’s free - British people do anyway if my last few works dos are anything
to go by. They get excited and think they need to get their money’s worth, even
though it’s not their money’s worth they’re getting. They forget that
they’re in their 40s with 2 kids, and can’t drink like they used to when they
were students, so they end up falling asleep [or over], vomiting through their
mouths [or noses], or committing petty acts of vandalism or larceny. Because in
the snooze you lose world we live in, the first thought is always “I
need to drink this before somebody else does.”

When you’re a student you’re still finding your boundaries
and pushing them, so… figuring that this wine couldn’t possibly be for us, I
decided I’d best sack lectures off that day, find a drinking buddy, and set to
work on drinking my good fortune before someone came a-looking.

It turned out that everyone had already gone to lectures
except myself and my housemate Chris, who was still in bed. Chris now maintains
that he had actually been to lectures already, and had since returned
home. If you knew Chris back then, you’d be forgiven for being sceptical about
that assertion. Getting up early? Yes, he was known for that. But going to
lectures? No – loading a lung and getting stoned is what he was more known for.
That and wearing a hat indoors, because washing his hair was too much trouble.

Either way, it didn’t take much to convince him that this
was something we needed to work on straight away, so he got up (or didn’t) and
we started drinking… out of pint glasses. Pints
of wine. In the morning. That’s the sort of thing you can only do when
you’re a student… or an unemployed alcoholic.

I’d like to tell you we had lots of fun adventures, but we
didn’t. I’m pretty sure all we achieved was a childish rampage around the house
followed by an hilarious trip to the local Kwik Save. I did learn two things
though;

1.when
drinking pints of wine in the morning, expect a monstrous headache by 6pm, and
an inability to sleep it off. It’s not the kind of mistake you make twice.
Actually it is, if only free wine would show up on the doorstep more often.

2.You
can’t drink wine in the same way you drink beer – because you will get very,
very pissed. Beer is for swigging, wine for sipping.

3.

We later learned that the wine was a Christmas gift from the
property company, and thus intended for all the housemates – but
obviously not intended for all the housemates to get drunk. So that was nice.
Fair play to our friends; they didn’t seem to mind too much that Chris and I
had drunk it all. I think they knew they would have done the same thing in our
position – what else can you expect in an environment where someone steals your
seat the moment you get up - and I mean the moment?

Anyone sitting in a prime TV viewing position in our house
would have to spend a long time weighing up the benefits of emptying their
bladder against the cost of being relegated to the far corner of the room on
their return, where they could only see the TV side-on. And they’d usually have
to bring whatever anyone else wanted from the kitchen on their way back because
no one else wanted to gamble. There was also the possibility that they might be
giving up prime position concerning any spliffs that were going round, and
let’s face it; that was far more important. It made for a tense waiting game
which sometimes led to physical tussles between rivals who made a bid for any
newly vacated seat, and I don’t think we’ve seen the long term effects this
would have on our bladders just yet.

Occasionally the whole seating plan would change as others
would take advantage of the tussle to improve their own position, now at the
expense of anyone foolish enough to have given any semblance of moving away
from their seat.

One such altercation that occurred while the housemates were
on acid resulted in one person sitting on another, such was their stubbornness
at having lost out on the seat – if I can’t have it, I’m going to make it as
uncomfortable as possible for you!

Yep; those days are gone. It’s considered rude now to occupy
someone’s newly vacated seat if there’s any chance they might be returning.
Similarly, it would take special circumstances to make me think of drinking
wine in the morning again – like, as I said, maybe a gallon of it turning up,
unannounced on the doorstep.

So, what have you got on this weekend? Yeh? Sounds good. As
for me, the missus and I are heading to Sheffield tomorrow for an nice
leisurely weekend away, visiting friends. You know there’s going to be
drinking. That’s about it, actually. Well, you have fun, and I’ll see you next
week for another post. Thanks for reading.

Saturday, 1 June 2013

You might remember that a few weeks ago I posed the eternal
question; how does a novice like me go about selecting some decent wine
from the myriad of shiny bottles that are all competing for my attention, ooh,
let's say, in the supermarket? You know, not that it's for me mind, but perhaps
when I'm having guests, and I know they like wine, and I might, for some reason
want them to enjoy it?

I'm not sure that last bit needed a question mark, and there's a chance my
original question was more concise than that, but it looks to me like I've
summed up the whole previous article there - because I didn't offer a solution,
I left it up to you. And one of you came to my aid. I say one of you, I
mean Clare from the Feast and Glory blog, who isn't so much one of you, as
a friend already. Nevertheless, she provided a brief set of guidelines that an
idiot like me could take to the supermarket with him. I decided to put them to
the test.

Clare and husband Gav were due to visit at the weekend, so
not only would I be able to test Clare's hypothesis, but also get feedback on
how well I did from my wine svengali or mentor. Hopefully, that would be
'well', and I would have learned some basic information that I could rely on in
future. I don't think things are going to change too much in the whole wino-sphere for
a good few years, so I figured I'd be sorted.

Now, Clare did tell me that outside of her basic guidelines,
the choice she makes when wine shopping ultimately comes down to such fickle
things as how she feels on the day and what the weather's like. WTF, yo! How am
I supposed to legislate for that? For one thing, I don't know what the
weather's going to be like in two days time, and even if I have thought to
check the BBC’s weather page and it
turns out to have been correct, I still wouldn't know how that would affect
Clare's preferences.

On top of that, I don't know how Clare is going to feel on
Saturday, and even if say, she was going to be feeling obstroculous (chances
fair to good), she didn't provide any information about what she would choose,
come that eventuality.

No, I was going to have to follow the very basic tenets of
what she told me. To save you having to go back to the earlier post (though youcan if you want), let me summarise Clare’s advice:

White: anything Sauvignon blanc fom the Marlborough region
of New Zealand or any Riesling from the ‘new world’. Alternatively you could go
French with a Sancerre or Chablis.

Obviously these are Clare’s preferences, and maybe not for
everyone. I didn’t much care because primarily I was buying for Clare, and as
far as I’m concerned, if she says it’s ok, then it’s ok.

I made some notes in my book and headed out to Tesco.
Hopefully I’d still be able to get something for £5 or under.

Clare had given me a few things to choose from there, but
even so, when I took price into account, it meant my options were limited. I
couldn’t find any of the Italian contingent within range, but I did grab a
Rioja, on offer, at £5 – half price. Result, just a white required then…

Straight to the New Zealand section, and knowing that Clare
very strongly favours Sauvignon Blanc, that was what I wanted. The cheapest was
this one at £6.20, a bit out of my ideal range. I looked at the Sancerre and
Chablis then, and they were all £10 or over. I’m not spending £10 on a single
bottle of wine.

Looking at all the possibilities from the new world still
seemed a little daunting to me, so we just opted for the New Zealand one at £6.20.
That’s £11.20 on wine, then. I couldn’t help wondering whether I might have
been better off just getting a cheap bottle of spirits – it would certainly
have been better value, but sadly not appropriate for the occasion - or what I
actually went in for. In fact, I was so absorbed by the task of buying wine
that I forgot to look at the spirits altogether! It was probably for the best.

You know, I get so much enjoyment from buying new bottles of
booze that I could almost wish I was enthusiastic about wine. It’s more
affordable in general than spirits, so I could treat myself more often without
feeling as guilty. Nor would it take as long to finish a bottle, but no, it’s
not to be. I’m a spirits and beer man, and beer isn’t that interesting to me
anymore, I just like it.

So here are the wines that I opted for. Don’t worry, I swear
this will be the last time I photograph wine, and hopefully this will be the
last time I talk about it on my blog.

you can see me in this picture!

How did we do, then?

In all honesty, it probably couldn’t go wrong because I
followed Clare’s instructions to the letter. Having written them down, they are
now inscribed on my brain, so I can draw upon that should this kind of
eventuality occur again, so that’s good.

And yes, everyone enjoyed the wine. Gav and Clare arrived
between 1 and 2 on Saturday afternoon, and I insisted we crack open some wine
before we went out. Clare had bought some Cloudy Bay, which she said normally
retails at £20-25. I gasped. There is no way you would find me spending £25 on
wine. I could get a decent blended scotch for that! In fact, you can get the
Highland Park 12, usually. Outrageous! I’m sorry, but there is no contest when
it comes to choosing between a bottle of Highland Park or any wine at the same
price.

Anyway, we opened the Cloudy Bay and then indeed, the
others. Normally in company, you open a bottle and then drink it till it’s
gone, but I figured; why not just open them all? What are we saving them for?
Not me!

Sauvignon Blancs have a clean, sharp taste, and seem to be
very clear. Yeh, they’re all right. Most of the red was left over, though I
don’t think it was due to anyone not liking it, we just didn’t get chance.
You’re supposed to drink it within three days according to the bottle, but that
didn’t happen either. Instead it was a week later when I was next able to try
it, and for some reason I was having trouble swallowing it. I’m afraid I didn’t
like it at all.

I decided to make a comparison with one of the bottles that
had been left over from our wedding (pictured). That one had been open for some
months by this point, but after a single sip I felt it was delicious – yes!
Actually delicious. And it was wine.

You can see on the picture that it’s a merlot. I
remember seeing the trailer for that film Sideways many years ago, and the
guy says, “I’m not drinking merlot!” As a result, I once bought a glass of red
wine from a pub (Manchester’s Sand Bar), and the barman asked what type. I
said, I didn’t know, and he said they’ve got a merlot and something else. I
reacted probably too quickly, and said, “not the merlot!”

The way he looked at me suggested he knew I’d seen the
trailer. I didn’t get around to watching that film till sometime last year. The
fact that it was about wine put me right off. It actually isn’t all that bad,
but it would be better if it were about a whisky tour.

Sadly Clare wasn’t around to be able to do a comparison with
our merlot, though she probably had some at the wedding. I’d be surprised if
she could remember whether she liked it though. I think she said nice things
about it at the time. It was her advice that prompted us to ensure that one of
the wines we provided to our guests was a Sauvignon Blanc.

So I think the lesson to be learned here is that
recommendations and guidance are all very well, but everyone has their own
preferences, and if you’re bothered enough, you’re just going to have to take a
little bit more of an interest and find out what your preferences are – make a
note of what country and region the next wine you enjoy is from, and what grape
variety it is. Encouraging you to get into wine is the last of my intentions,
but it’s up to you after all. I’m not drinking my share of the wine, so I
suppose someone should.

So in conclusion, would I have been happier spending £12 on
a cheap bottle of spirits? Absolutely, but what would I have written about then
- how I was going to buy wine but didn’t? I suppose I could have done another
Budget Brands post, try that Tesco own brand scotch or something. Still, that
leaves me something to do in the future. Keep an eye out for that one.

That's it for this week. Sorry it was late, but thanks for reading. I'll be attending another poker night this evening, so I'm particularly looking forward to opening a couple of new special bottles. No doubt I'll tell you more about that at some time in the future. Enjoy your weekend now, y'hear?

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.